Vaigyanikanchi Charitre (Scientists and Inventors)

Alfred Nobel (October 21, 1833 – December 10, 1896) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, and philanthropist best known for inventing dynamite and for establishing the Nobel Prizes. His contributions to science and his dedication to promoting peace and humanitarian causes have had a profound impact on the world. Nobel is credited with inventing dynamite in 1867, which was a safer and more sta...

The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, were American aviation pioneers who are credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful airplane. Their historic achievements in aviation marked a significant turning point in the history of transportation and technology. Orville Wright (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912) w...

"Guilielmo Marconi," was an Italian inventor and electrical engineer known for his pioneering work in the field of wireless telecommunication. Marconi is often credited with the development of the radio and the establishment of the first transatlantic wireless communication. Born on April 25, 1874, in Bologna, Italy, Marconi came from a wealthy family and was encouraged in his interest in science...

Chief rocket engineer of the Third Reich and one of the fathers of the U.S. space program, Wernher von Braun is a source of consistent fascination. Glorified as a visionary and vilified as a war criminal, he was a man of profound moral complexities, whose intelligence and charisma were coupled with an enormous and, some would say, blinding ambition. This podcast delivers a meticulously researched...

Vikram Sarabhai, the renaissance man of Indian science, visualized the impossible and often made it happen. Founder of India's space programme, Vikram dreamed of communication satellites that would educate people at a time when even a modest rocket programme seemed daring; of huge agricultural complexes serviced by atomic power and desalinated sea water. He envisioned research technology that woul...

In terms of practical accomplishments helping to better the lives of people today, Madame Marie Curie far exceeds the achievements of any other modern or scientific person. Anybody who is in a hospital that uses an X-Ray machine is using technology developed by Marie Curie. Any cancer patient who is undergoing radiation treatment to prolong life is using a procedure discovered by Marie Curie. Anyb...

Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance-era mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe, in all likelihood independently of Aristarchus of Samos, who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier. The publication of Copernicus' model in his book 'On the Revol...

"If they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge." - Galileo GalileiIn every age there are courageous people who break with tradition to explore new ideas and challenge accepted truths. Galileo Galilei was just such a man-a genius-and the first to turn the telescope to the skies to map the heavens. In doing so, he offered objective evidence that the earth was not the fixed center...

The complete works of antiquity's great geometer appear here in this podcast. Remarkable for his range of thought and his mastery of treatment, Archimedes addressed such topics as the famous problems of the ratio of the areas of a cylinder and an inscribed sphere; the measurement of a circle; the properties of conoids, spheroids, and spirals; and the quadrature of the parabola.   पुरातन काळातील उत...

Louis Pasteur, a French biologist, microbiologist, and chemist, had made some remarkable discoveries in the field of science. He was the first scientist to create vaccines for fowl cholera; anthrax, a major livestock disease, and rabies. Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist born in Dole. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of disease. His disc...

Edison is sometimes regarded as someone who loved arguing with other inventors who were going in different directions from him, yet his tenacity and dedication to his own work were what made so many of his inventions workable. No matter which way you look at Edison, from failed businessman, renowned inventor, distant father to his children, or to an argumentative scientist, there is one thing ever...

Johannes Gutenberg wasn't just an inventor. He was also a goldsmith, printer and publisher. One of the most puzzling lapses in accounts of the rise of the West following the decline of the Roman Empire is the casual way historians have dealt with Gutenberg's invention of printing. The cultural achievements that followed the fifteenth century, when the West moved from relative backwardness to remar...

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. Bell's father, grandfather and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with he...

In 1913, a young unschooled Indian clerk wrote a letter to G H Hardy, begging the preeminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers. Realizing the letter was the work of a genius, Hardy arranged for Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most improbable and productive collaborations ever chronicled. Devout Hindu Ramanujan, "the Prince of Intuit...

Jagadish Chandra Bose at a relatively young age, established himself among the ranks of European scientists during the heyday of colonial rule in India. He was one of those great Indian scientists who helped to introduce western science into India. A physicist, a plant electrophysiologist and one of the first few biophysicists in the world, Sir J C Bose was easily 60 years ahead of his time and mu...

Sir C.V. Raman was one of the rare Indians who excelled in a field which was in his time unexplored – Physics. He deserved the honour that India gave him by proclaiming him as the Bharat Ratna. A true Indian at heart; he made his country proud by relentlessly pursuing a belief that he had – that light scatters and changes in wavelength when it traverses a transparent material. This phenomena earne...